Restoration work advances at Lone Pine Cemetery

Descendants of those buried in Lone Pine Cemetery prop up a toppled head stone with use of a tractor

Headstones of long-forgotten Palouse pioneers continue to be uncovered by a group of descendants who have been gathering regularly to work on the Lone Pine Cemetery.

The cemetery, located on a hill a few miles outside Tekoa, holds the graves of pioneers starting in the late 1800s and ending in the 1950s.

Almost half a century of neglect and harsh weather has hidden many headstones beneath densely overgrown bushes, rotted the fence outside the cemetery, knocked over headstones and erased names.

Friends of the Lone Pine Cemetery, a group of Lone Pine descendants and their spouses, have been working over the past three years to restore the cemetery. Scattered throughout the northwest, members of the group have been meeting a few times a year to work on the cemetery.

Several members April 10 used a tractor to stand up two massive headstones which had fallen over. Over the entrance roadway to the cemetery they installed the frame for what will eventually be a broad sign hanging over the road.

With the aid of several very old maps, they have waded through the brush to locate old headstones. They are also working on two sides of the fence.

“I was in there snipping barb wire and I saw something crisp and sharp in the dirt there and it was a monument with initials, one [monument] on top of the other,” said Rod Smith, a descendant who lives in Kettle Falls. His great-grandparents, Reuben and Lucinda Smiley, donated the original plot of land for the cemetery in the late 1800s.

Lone Pine Cemetery was recently certified as a Washington Historic Site with the state Department of Archaeology. They are now looking into becoming a 501C3 organization which qualifies donations to be tax deductible for the donors.

One descendant, Jim Erwin of Walla Walla, said he has a keen interest in genealogy.

“It kind of gives me more of an idea about who I am,” Erwin said. His lingering interest in his family has found an outlet when he and his wife work to restore the cemetery.

“I want to record a lot of that for my family,” Erwin said.